


Janitorial Duties

by Merkwerkee



Category: Void Jumpers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:22:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27372622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: An old hand at The Company, Mervyn sees the start of what might have been a very promising career.
Kudos: 1





	Janitorial Duties

So, I’m cleaning up Patty’s regular morning coffee spill.

Honestly, the guy’s a ditz. If anyone asked me, the only reason the guy still has a job around here is because he’s got The Looks. You know what I mean, a jaw you could use to break stone and tousled hair that always seems to come off as just the perfect mix of untidy and coiffed. Has to be that, ‘cause the guy has _nothing_ going on between his ears and every morning like clockwork he’s at his desk, spilling his coffee. It’s gotten to the point where I just leave the bucket there after my early-morning mop of the Atrium.

Anyway, so I’m cleaning up this spill and Patty’s being vapid at some poor fool on the other end of a holocall when the main doors slide open and in walks some kid. Well, I say kid - guy’s probably in his twenties. Still, the wide-eyed gawping around the lobby makes him look younger to my eyes. That, and I’m older than I care to think about; I’m damn good at what I do, and I know when to keep my trap shut. Most folks they hire on for the cleaning ain’t as wise - or lucky. I’ve had a few close scrapes over the years, but at least I ain’t ever ended up like Andrew. Poor guy; they had to do his funeral over a _bucket_.

Patty’s out of his chair before I even realize he’s moving, and he’s got the kid by the elbow and is steering him towards the lift doors. Interesting. Kid don’t look like much, but Patty’s pulling out his Professional Charm. Kid must have something the bigwigs want, and _bad_. I don’t know that he’s real Company material, though; even from this distance, he doesn’t quite seem the type. Still, I’ve been wrong before and maybe he’ll do well.

Just before they walk into the lifts, the indicator light above the doors blinks on to signal the car’s here and it reflects oddly off the floor. I frown and move in closer, bringing my mop and bucket with me. Spill’s cleaned up, and that patch of floor ought to be good past lunch; if Patty spills his coffee again, he can wait a couple minutes.

Sure enough, I get over to the path the kid walked from the doors to the lifts and I have to grimace. Kid’s younger than I thought, fresh out of college - I’d recognize that nasty, cheap floor wax they use over there from a mile away. If I’ve told Bertha once, I’ve told her a _hundred times_ ; doesn’t _matter_ what the science department gives you or what kinda “miraculous” solution they tout for keepin’ floors nice, ain’t any chemicals that can take the place of good hard work. Oh sure, you need some cleanser for the stuff that doesn’t take to water, but beyond that a good scrubbin’s all you need to do.

I should leave it at least 'til the kid’s done ‘cause sure as the rockets rise every morning at 11 he’s gonna track more on my floors, but it’s unsightly and I ain’t got anything more pressing right at the moment. Mop, bucket, floor, and _scrub_. Bertha’s wax don’t do shit for the shine, but _damn_ if it ain’t stubborn as hell about coming off. It takes me all the way to the kid coming back down and leaving out just to get the - unevenly distributed, kid walks with a limp; wonder what happened to him to cause _that_ \- bootprints off the section where he’d wandered towards the reception desk before Patty’d swept him up.

Kid looks a bit pensive when he comes back down, but at least he walks a pretty straight line out the doors. Most of the wax on his shoes goes back down the line he’s already walked and I gotta give myself a bit of a pat on the back about not having to repeat work. I get to mopping, and Patty comes down a few minutes after the kid leaves. I lean on my mop and give a polite cough.

Patty starts like a deer in headlights, freezing for a moment before he sees it’s just me. Not the first time he’s done that; I don’t think he realizes I’m not a piece of furniture, half the time.

“Which room?” I ask. If he left wax on this floor, he’ll have left wax on that floor and I don’t wanna hafta search every single conference and interview room to figure out which one it was.

Patty leans in conspiratorially, like that’ll stop the audio sensors the Company has embedded every three feet in the ceiling from hearing him. “Conference room A112, floor 35, and get this - it was _Shavanaugh_ who was in there interviewing him!”

He leans back triumphantly and I raise an eyebrow. I ain’t dumb enough to comment on that out loud, but _damn_. Shavanaugh is an up-and-comer currently doing a stint in HR just to pull together a loyal power base before she makes a shot for the big leagues. If she ain’t killed in a “lab accident” or “corporate espionage” before then, she’ll be a power to contend with in a few years. If she has her eyes on the kid…

Still, it ain’t my place to wonder about the power struggles of the high and mighty - especially not in a building where they had more electronic bugs than real ones. They’d have me strung up before lunch, or my name ain’t Mervin. Patty, bless his dear little heart, just wilts at my silence and heads back to his desk. You’d think I murdered his dog or something. Eh, not my circus and _certainly_ not my monkey. I refresh the mop and get back to work.

* * *

Took me _four hours_ , all told, to clean the damn wax off the floors. Bertha must’ve gotten a new compound from the chem department; stuff seemed almost _bonded_ to the floor. I ended up using some of the nastiest solvent I keep in my cart to get it off, and of course the fumes lingered. Got a memo about it this morning - some bigwig didn’t like the smell. Fortunately, my supervisor ain’t been replaced since the last one fell into some inventor’s new device for ore refinement so I signed off for the memo and wrote my own self up for it like they expected and put it with all the rest of the complaints.

I’m back cleaning up Patty’s spill again - I’d swear he does it on purpose except he’s been a little more frosty to me these days. Maybe he thinks he’s getting one over on me, maybe at this point it’s just habit for him too. Anyway, I’m cleaning up the spill and the kid comes in again. I keep my eye on him, but seems like he ain’t been back to the college since the last time he was by; there’s no weird wax crap left on my floors after he walks past me. He’s got some more equipment this time though, some kind of fancy pack and glove. Stupid of him; if he dies in a “lab accident” now, the Company will just pay for his funeral and keep everything he had with him. Especially if he doesn’t toe the line with the “Company Values”

Wouldn’t be the first time.

Sure enough, I get the call a couple hours later - cleanup in Lab 7. Bit slower than I would’ve expected, but maybe they wanted to make it look good. Any which way, I get my heavy-duty cleaning cart and head on up. Hopefully the kid’s in enough pieces for a decent funeral; burying an empty casket’s mighty hard on the family, from what I’ve seen. Plus I ain’t keen on having to wait for the pieces to, ah “pass through” whatever experiment or experiments they ended up in.

I get up to Lab 7 and end up pulling the cart in backwards - push doors, not sliding ones on this lab - so it takes me a minute to get everything sorted out. The smell hits first; old meat and the kind of mold you only find in old houses. I’ve smelled worse; this ain’t even worth a turn of the stomach, not a single rumble. Then I turn around.

“Huh,” I say, surprised enough to forget to keep my trap shut. “Looks like the kid’ll fit right in after all.”

I grab my mop and get to work.


End file.
